NASA plans electronic von Braun collection

WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says it's seeking ideas about how to analyze and catalog an electronic, searchable Wernher von Braun database.

NASA is soliciting comment from the public, academia and industry on how to create the database on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the historic first moon landing in 1969.

Von Braun was the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and a key figure in the development of the Saturn V rocket and NASA's Apollo program.

"NASA has a full collection of "Weekly Notes" von Braun wrote during the 1960s and 1970s," the space agency said. "These notes were used to track programmatic and institutional issues at Marshall, and are considered by many historians to be a valuable source of data."

Space agency officials say they are looking for concepts that will provide an innovative resource for agency engineers and scientists, as well as researchers in academia and industry.

More information and the request for information is available at http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/home/von_Braun_RFI.html.